When the spirit drives you crazy

Sermon on Mark 1:9-15

The wilderness we didn’t choose. The wilderness something drove us into. That’s what this past year has felt like to me. Like a place I don’t want to be in. Like the wrong show I accidentally had signed up for. Like a reality I hoped would turn out to be a nightmare and someone would turn on the lights and say: All is good, wake up, or you might miss your dinner invitation and the show at your local theater later on.

But nobody turned on the lights, nobody woke me up, nobody even asked for my consent to be in this mess. It just happened and all I could do was react. Which is how life has been feeling for nearly a year now. A never-ending sequence of reactions, mostly delayed and imperfect and inadequate after few days or weeks. And while there is hope, there is no real idea of how the new normal will look like eventually.

Now, in a fairytale, a prince or mighty knight would show up eventually. Saving us from the wild beasts all at once. From Corona, from racism, from poverty, from selfishness, from greed, from bad jokes, from radio hosts laughing at gay men who died of HIV. From friendly congregants asking young female pastors why they even think that women can be ordained. Just happened to a friend of mine. You name the beasts. That fairytale would have started with “Once upon a time” and ended with “and they lived happily ever after”. 

Unfortunately, this framing is nowhere to be found in the bible. As much as I wish it was. Magical solutions are super rare in that big book of books and they almost never lead to a perfect life. They often don’t even spare people from pain.

Like Noah in our Old Testament reading today. God made a covenant with him. But only after Noah had lost everyone in his life apart from his immediate family. Every friend he had ever had, every man he had ever traded with, was dead. Swallowed by the great waters. 

For 40 days and 40 nights, Noah was stuck with his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law. They formed a bubble of survival without the chance to even go for a walk or sit in one’s car for a while just to get some alone time. And while 40 days seems like an afternoon stroll to us after 2020, Noah had no idea when the time would be over. I am sure it felt like ages to him.

Which is the whole idea of the number 40 in the bible. A time we cannot anticipate it will ever end. A time that is too long to even remember the past and what was normal back then. We might be able to show pictures from 2019 or dwell in memories. But every time I see scenes in movies with lots of unmasked people in closed spaces, it makes me cringe. And I actively have to remind myself, that this used to be fine and safe. And I lack the imagination of ever feeling that safety again. The intermezzo has been too long and our human brains are wired to adapt to a new normal once it’s been around for too long. The 40 days of Corona are far from over. It’s the reason why we are so bad at imagining better futures and working towards them. Our actual lack of imagination driven by the wish to survive. Which makes us forget that we should actually thrive. And not just us but everyone. The entire creation. Because God’s covenant with Noah includes every living being on this planet.

And then there is today’s Gospel. Jesus, God’s beloved Son, claimed through baptism. Like all of us. Anointed with the Holy Spirit. Like all of us. Possessed by the Holy Spirit. And then that same spirit gives him an involuntary ride into the wilderness. Again for 40 long days and nights. Without asking Jesus for permission or consent. Because the Holy Spirit tends to be rather impolite and decisive in a way a dictator might admire. And nothing will stop her. Not even God’s son.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Mark if it wasn’t brief and told in a seemingly nonchalant way. Just the facts. Great storytelling looks different. Mark is the Gospel for scientists, the Twitter account of the old times. Put everything in 280 characters max. 

The Holy Spirit drives Jesus out in the wilderness. She is not just with him, holding his hand while withstanding the beasts. She actively sends him to a place that’s full of lonely danger. The beloved Son is the tempted Son and the Holy Spirit is the driving force. And you might start wondering by now: Where is the Good News?

Notice that the Spirit doesn’t tempt Jesus. She just drives him out there. Which is an experience that hits home for me. Truth be told, we rarely volunteer to go to wilderness places. We don’t tend to look for opportunities to struggle. Which is probably why Mark reports that the Spirit drove Jesus rather than simply make a suggestion. I sure feel like something drove me into March of 2020 and all the months after that. I wouldn’t have picked that struggle had anybody asked for my opinion. But nobody did. We got a free ride into the wilderness.

Mark doesn’t talk about the different temptations Satan posed at Jesus. Those details don’t seem to be important to him. What is important is that the Holy Spirit and angels are there alongside Jesus. That we don’t have to deal with this alone. That’s the Good news. And really the only news that matter. God tears away our every attempt to say, “While I appreciate your help, God, I’ve got this. I can figure it out.” And God’s Spirit just laughs deeply and keeps us company anyway.

And as much as that sounds like church talk of community and carrying each other and usually is what we long for in our words, it’s not necessarily what we are good at doing. Most of us love to help and hate to ask for help.

To get help when we need it. Because to need help in our society is a sign of insecurity, exposes weakness, but more so, when it comes to issues of faith, intimates our inability to thwart sin. It seems we are even good at pretense before God. Just that God isn’t fooled.

Which is why today’s Gospel calls out our greatest temptation — the temptation to think that we can handle life by ourselves and that God is not present. Not in our suffering, not in our loneliness, not in our longing for human interactions and hugs and shared meals.

And again, the Good News Mark shares with us is: God is at work both for us and through us during our wilderness times. God is there to help us help and ask for help.

And so, I wonder whether we can ask: “Even though I did not wish for this, how might God be at work through this difficult period? What can I get out of this?”

These questions aren’t meant to redeem struggle and suffering or to give it meaning. God forbid, that’s not our job. And everyone of you who has experienced severe loss and sickness knows that. We don’t want to hear that everything happens for a reason. Or that God never gives us more than we can carry. Because God does. To us and to Jesus. And none of us enjoy it. 

These questions are to remind us of God’s presence during our current wilderness time and all the ones ahead of us. The times that leave us feeling stretched beyond our abilities. Because you know what? The same Spirit of God that descended upon Jesus at Baptism and drove Jesus out into the wilderness also accompanied him during that tough time. The same Holy Spirit that descended upon you at Baptism and drives you out into the wilderness at times also accompanies you any time life sucks. And sometimes, we can even see the angels in the wilderness. So that the wilderness might for a moment feel like a sacred place. 

Like the other day, a friend of mine asked his friends on Facebook to share what they will miss after this pandemic will be under control. Shared meals, wrote some. Time with the kids. No commute. Less traffic. Sleeping in. Wearing PJs in the middle of the day. Walks in the woods during the week. It was a page of gratefulness in the midst of a wilderness. Gratefulness for the sacred in a wild place. Because yes, even the wilderness is sacred. Because God’s Spirit is with us. Always. Amen.